Stop ACTA in Europe

We've been hearing a lot lately about SOPA and PIPA in the United
States. In the meantime, ACTA has been creeping along under the radar,
and last week it was signed in Japan by the EU and its member states.

GNU Project renews focus on free software in education

The newly formed GNU Education Team is being led by Dora Scilipoti, an
Italian free software activist and teacher. Under her leadership, the
Team has developed a list of specific goals to guide their work:

Present cases of educational institutions around the world who are
successfully using and teaching free software.

Show examples of how free programs are being used by educational
institutions to improve the learning and teaching processes.

Publish articles on the various aspects involved in the use of free
software by educational institutions.

Maintain a dialogue with teachers, students and administrators of
educational institutions to listen to their difficulties and
provide support.

Keep in contact with other groups around the world committed to the
promotion of free software in education.

We invite people who share our goals and our views to join us. We
need help to spot special cases of schools and free programs, write
reports, talk to schools, edit and convert audio visual materials to
free formats, do graphic design, and more. Our contact address is
education@gnu.org.

The Mozilla Public License version 2.0 is out--and GPL-compatible!

The Mozilla Public License (MPL) version 2.0 is a major update to
Mozilla's flagship license, which covers most of the Foundation's own
free software projects, as well as others'. The FSF was engaged
throughout this process, especially on questions about compatibility
with GNU licenses.

Last week, Apple announced ebook authoring software called iBooks
Author. As you would expect from Apple, the software is completely
proprietary--but the license includes some terms that are so
restrictive, they shock even Apple's fans. Fortunately, there is free
software to do the same job.

BLACKOUT

The FSF is proud to have participated in the January 18th protest
against SOPA by blacking out all of our public web sites, including
fsf.org, gnu.org, DefectiveByDesign.org, and directory.fsf.org. We
thank everyone who joined us and supported us during this effort!
We will continue to participate in the amazing coalition of organizations
working to protect the Internet.

Measures governments can use to promote free software

This new article published by Richard Stallman suggests policies for
a strong and firm effort to promote free software within the state, and
to lead the rest of the country towards software freedom. Adoption of
the measures outlined in the article would help a country recover
control over its computing, and lead the country's citizens, businesses
and organizations toward control over theirs.

Stallman's Law

Learn more about who we are and what we do

This year we decided to use our annual fundraiser as an opportunity to
share with the world a more detailed look at the work we do here at
the FSF. So we wrote a four part series, We want to do more for you.

Part 1 of the series provides an overview of some of what we
accomplish with a staff of "ten dedicated and effective individuals,
working with a global network of volunteers and supporters of the free
software movement."

Part 2 shares with you the heroics of staff member Jeanne Rasata who
in addition to helping to coordinate and plan Richard Stallman's
grueling travel and speaking schedule, also acts as front-line of
communication for nearly all email sent to the FSF, as well as being the
virtual front-desk for questions and requests from FSF associate
members.

Part 3 provides a glimpse into the work of our campaigns team of Matt
Lee and Josh Gay, who carry out our advocacy campaigns, as well as a
large share of our public relations, fundraising, web development, and
graphic design at the FSF.

LibrePlanet featured resource: Group:GNU Generation

Every month on LibrePlanet, we highlight one resource that is
interesting and useful -- often one that could use your help.

For this month, we are featuring the Group GNU Generation, an ongoing
community and competition to involve pre-university and high school
students (approximately age 13-18) in free software. This is a great
project that is in need of a little rejuvination. Get involved today!

Take action with the FSF

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's
work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.fsf.org/join. If
you're already a member, you can help refer new members (and earn some
rewards) by adding a line with your member number to your email
signature like:

The FSF is also always looking for volunteers
(http://www.fsf.org/volunteer). From rabble-rousing to hacking, from
issue coordination to envelope stuffing -- there's something here for
everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaign section
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents,
DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.

#

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No
Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ or
send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San
Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

The newly formed GNU Education Team is being led by Dora Scilipoti, an
Italian free software activist and teacher. Under her leadership, the
Team has developed a list of specific goals to guide their work:

Present cases of educational institutions around the world who are
successfully using and teaching free software.

Show examples of how free programs are being used by educational
institutions to improve the learning and teaching processes.

Publish articles on the various aspects involved in the use of
free software by educational institutions.

Maintain a dialogue with teachers, students and administrators of
educational institutions to listen to their difficulties and
provide support.

Keep in contact with other groups around the world committed to
the promotion of free software in education.

GNU and its host organization, the Free Software Foundation (FSF),
emphasize that free software principles are a prerequisite for any
educational environment that uses computers:

Educational institutions of all levels should use and teach free
software because it is the only software that allows them to
accomplish their essential missions: to disseminate human knowledge
and to prepare students to be good members of their community. The
source code and the methods of free software are part of human
knowledge. On the contrary, proprietary software is secret,
restricted knowledge, which is the opposite of the mission of
educational institutions. Free software supports education,
proprietary software forbids education.

In an article at
http://fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-education-website-relaunch,
Scilipoti adds insights about the project's organizing philosophy,
current contributors, and progress so far. Of her basic motivation for
being involved, she says, "As a free software advocate and a teacher,
I always felt that the GNU Project needed to address the subject
specifically and in depth, for it is in the education field that its
ethical principles find the most fertile ground for achieving the goal
of building a better society."

In her article, Scilipoti also highlights some of the free software
success stories from around the world, especially Kerala, India, where
the government has migrated over 2,600 of its public schools to free
software.

While the Education Team has already compiled a collection of useful
materials, they are also looking for more volunteer contributors.
People who want to help, or who have information about instructive
examples of existing use of free software in schools, should contact
education@gnu.org.

"Education really is one of the most fundamental areas we need to
focus on to achieve real social change," said Free Software Foundation
executive director John Sullivan. "We need to be acknowledging and
assisting schools that are doing the right thing, and helping those
who aren't yet on board understand why those giveaway Microsoft
Office, iPad, and Kindle deals aren't so great for classrooms after
all. We're very thankful to all of the Team members for stepping up to
meet this challenge. I hope others will be inspired by their work and
join the effort."

The Education Team has also been working closely with GNU's
Translation Team to make the new materials available in as many
languages as possible. People interested in helping with the
translation component of the project should see the information at
http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.translations.html.

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software — particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants — and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites,
located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information
about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

About Free Software and Open Source

The free software movement's goal is freedom for computer users. Some,
especially corporations, advocate a different viewpoint, known as
"open source," which cites only practical goals such as making
software powerful and reliable, focuses on development models, and
avoids discussion of ethics and freedom. These two viewpoints are
different at the deepest level. For more explanation, see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.

About the GNU Operating System and Linux

Richard Stallman announced in September 1983 the plan to develop a
free software Unix-like operating system called GNU. GNU is the only
operating system developed specifically for the sake of users'
freedom. See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.

In 1992, the essential components of GNU were complete, except for
one, the kernel. When in 1992 the kernel Linux was re-released under
the GNU GPL, making it free software, the combination of GNU and Linux
formed a complete free operating system, which made it possible for
the first time to run a PC without non-free software. This combination
is the GNU/Linux system. For more explanation, see
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.

It all began in December 2008 at the "Free Software Free Society"
International Conference held in Trivandrum, India. During an informal
conversation with Richard Stallman and attendees at the event, the
topic of the role of free software in education was brought up and I
was asked to take up the task of working on the education section of
the Web site. As a free software advocate and a teacher, I always felt
that the GNU Project needed to address the subject specifically and in
depth, for it is in the education field that its ethical principles
find the most fertile ground for achieving the goal of building a
better society.

I joined gnu.org with a desire to do more than maintain the pages or
add schools and free educational programs to the existing lists. I
wanted to build a section structured so as to provide detailed
descriptions of schools that have chosen to include exclusively free
software in their curricula, and of free educational programs and
resources employed in schools. I also saw the need to provide room for
articles that would shed more light on the subject. The articles
within the section would have to be arranged in a clear scheme so as
to make it easy for visitors to find information.

"Case Studies" is the
place where we currently present cases of schools that are
successfully using and teaching free software. We talk about their
experience, the problems they encountered and how they solved them,
their motivations, the benefits they gained, and their involvement in
and contributions to free software. We do not attempt to build an
exhaustive database of schools committed to free software — that is
already being done on other Web sites. Instead, in this initial stage
we focus on schools whose motivations for the use of free software are
on the ethical side rather than centered solely on the technical or
economic advantages. We found a few cases, one of which is a school in
Argentina: an elementary teacher with limited technical skills managed
to get her school to migrate all computers to GNU/Linux by showing
decision makers at the school that the use of nonfree software was
in contrast with the moral values promoted by the
institution.

These cases are part of the data we gather during our observation
work. They serve as material for thought in our search for a method to
be presented as an educational model that will highlight the impact of
free software on society and will be effective to bring its values
into the education field.

We also intend to talk to schools that may not have completely grasped
the importance and the implications of teaching free software and its
ethical principles. We want to support and encourage them in all
possible ways.

"Educational
Resources" contains
educational free software as well as other resources such as free (as
in freedom) printed or digital educational materials, and institutions
that offer degree courses on the various aspects of free software. As
with schools, our aim is not to build exhaustive listings, but to
highlight instructive examples.

For educational free software, we report on specific programs that
show how software freedom benefits the educational process, with an
emphasis on the ethical implications of the use of technology. We base
our work on the philosophical grounds of the GNU Project.

A good example of a free program that we present is the case of Tux
Paint, used by a school in
India to teach students as young as eleven how to put into practice
the four freedoms, including freedom 1 — the freedom to study and
modify the program. This case
alone debunks
the myth that being a developer is a requirement to exercise software
freedom; it provides evidence that software freedom lives not in the
realm of abstract theories but can be exercised by all users,
including children.

In the "Education
Projects" subsection
we mention other groups around the world who are working in the
education field and share the principles of the GNU Project. Among
others, we mention the Free Software Foundation Europe Education
Project and IT@School, the Indian project from the government of
Kerala that migrated more than 2,600 public schools to free software.

The section also contains a FAQ
page, where we answer the
most common issues and questions that we receive; the Education Team
page, in which we present
in detail our goals, our motivations, and our positions; and a Table
of Contents for easy
reference.

On the main page, under the title "In
Depth", there is
a growing list of links to articles that we publish which go deeper
into the subject.

By no means do we consider our work finished. On the contrary, it is a
starting point. What we have done constitutes a solid foundation for
further work. We remain in close contact with people from India since
the work being done there in the education field is significant —
probably the most successful case in the world of free software
implementation on a large scale in schools is found in the state of
Kerala. There is also important progress in Latin America and in some
regions of Spain; we plan to work on those cases soon.

Many people ask us why we think it is important that educational
institutions use and teach free software. They wonder: "What does free
software have to do with education?" It is important to note that one
of the key concepts at the root of the free software movement is that
knowledge is a resource to be shared in freedom so that it can be
spread for the benefit of all. Similarly, the whole educational
process is based on the sharing and dissemination of knowledge; it is
not possible to educate where sharing is forbidden. As Richard
Stallman explains:

The source code and the methods of free software are part of human
knowledge. The mission of every school is to disseminate human
knowledge. Proprietary software is not part of human knowledge. It's
secret, restricted knowledge, which schools are not allowed to
disseminate. (From a speech at the University of Pavia, Italy, in
September 2007, when receiving an honorary degree in Engineering.)

So we would reverse the question: why would a school want to dishonor
its duty by bringing nonfree software to the classroom?

The education section thus tends to emphasize the political importance
of using and teaching free software and its positive impact on
society, a point of view which is shared by all members of the
Education Team:

Matteo Gamba is an Italian student of Mathematics at the University of
Turin. He came in contact with free software at high school during an
awareness program carried out by NGO
Hipatia. With other fellow students at the
school, he founded the group GURI to
promote the principles of the GNU Project and fight against the
growing practice of treating knowledge as property.

Matteo is an active member of Hipatia and currently working to
elaborate an educational method to transmit the social and ethical
values of free software to students. He says, "We need to elaborate a
new educational paradigm to get across to the students the social and
ethical values of free software."

Matias Croce is an Argentine student of Information Technology
Engineering at the National Technological University in the Province
of Mendoza. He first knew about free software at his Faculty and
became involved by joining local free software groups. He later
participated in the foundation of a project based at the
Faculty to promote free software. The
group organizes events in Mendoza, such as the FSD and
FLISoL, the largest free
software event in Latin America. Matias contributed the final
structure of the new section and the layout of its pages.

I myself am of Italian descent born in Argentina and currently based
in Italy. I hold a BA in Education and a BA in Translation from the
Faculty of Languages of the National University of Córdoba, Argentina.
I also completed part of a course of study in Fine Arts at the same
university.

I had heard about the existence of a free operating system long ago,
but had never paid much attention to it due to my lack of interest in
pure technical matters. It was only in 2006, after watching the video
of a speech by Richard Stallman, that I understood there is actually
much more than just technical issues at the root of the free software
movement. I became aware of the importance of spreading the word about
software freedom and joined AsSoLi
and the Italian GNU Translators Team with that purpose in mind. With a
background in the Humanities and Arts, my interest is focused almost
exclusively on the philosophical and political aspects of free
software.

We invite people who share our goals and our views to join us. We need
help in spotting special cases of schools and free programs, write
reports, talk to schools, edit and convert audio visual materials to
free formats, do graphic design, and more. Our contact address is
education@gnu.org.

Of course, the most obvious way to give money to the FSF is to become
an associate member -- associate members are individuals who make
scheduled financial contributions to support our work. In return, they
get some benefits, and we get to keep doing what we
do.

You probably already know about online donations made with a credit
or debit card, but did you know the FSF also accepts payments via
PayPal? Not only that, but did you know we even worked with PayPal a
couple of years ago to change their
conditions, to remove proprietary
software? You can even become an associate member, using PayPal, and
pay us each month from your regular bank account.

Don't forget, many employers offer donation matching schemes -- you
might be missing out on a way to increase, and in many cases double,
your contribution, just through your employer.

If you use credit cards, you might like to consider signing up for
a card that sponsors the FSF --
we get $50 when you do, as well as 0.3% of all the retail
transactions you make with the card. Of course, credit cards are
not a decision to make lightly, since they can involve loss of
privacy and increased debt, so think carefully before getting one.

Do you have a car you no longer use, because it's trapped under a
mountain of snow, or that you just don't use anymore now that you've
switched to GNU/Linux because you're no longer driving to the
electronics store to get viruses taken off your computer? We'll
take it! We've partnered up with
a company that'll take your old car at no cost to you -- and when
they sell it, you'll get a tax receipt for the value.

Did you get any unwanted presents for Christmas this year? Do you
really need to hang on to that "ULTRA R@RE!!!" VHS copy of Dunston
Checks In? If now is a good time to clear some junk from your life,
why not sell it on eBay? If you sell your item via eBay Giving
Works
you can donate a percentage (from 5% to 100%) of your eBay sale
direct to the FSF! To get things going, you can buy something from
this box of OpenMoko FreeRunner
spares
we found in a closet at the office. I'm going to try and convince
people in the FSF office to sell some of their own unwanted gifts
too.

Do you ever wish the FSF could be at more events around the world?
Well, you can donate your unwanted frequent flyer miles to us! This
is actually a little complicated, and unfortunately not
tax-deductible, but contact us and our resident
frequent flyer expert (that's John Sullivan) will figure out the
rest.

Associate members get a 20% discount on FSF merchandise and free
entry to the LibrePlanet 2012 conference
in March. If you're not a member yet, you're missing out on all the
extra goodies you can buy... don't have every one of our books,
every t-shirt and every sticker? I hope you'll also get yourself a
stuffed gnu toy or two, a couple of signed art prints, some buttons,
a keychain, a pin for your shirt collar, one of our hooded
sweatshirts and a selection of our finest reference cards. Instant
geek cred can be yours at
http://shop.fsf.org/!

Popmoney
and Flattr
are new ways to give us a little (or a lot) of money quickly.

If BitCoin's your thing, 1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN will be
of use to you. Note that since we are using a single address for
receiving all contributions, we are not providing full
anonymity. Further, we support the idea of people being able to
donate anonymously, but we can't speak to the security or soundness
of Bitcoin in the long-term.

If you work in the kind of place where bringing all your GNU Press
books and shirts to work is a fun thing to do, maybe you work at a
place that should be featured on our list of Corporate Patrons, too?

If you're already working for one of our Corporate Patrons, you
probably have job openings at your company. You should prod your HR
department to list them on our job board, the only Web site
that lists exclusively free software jobs. We know this can be a
great resource, and we just need a little more help to get it going.

Finally, many companies have donation schemes via their local United
Way offices -- if yours does, you can donate to the FSF!

We've added many new ways to give money recently, but we're sure there
are other ways we haven't even considered yet. If you have an idea,
let us know at donate@fsf.org.

The GNU General Public License (GPL) is one of the main tools the FSF
provides to help protect computer user freedom. Every programmer can
use the GPL as the license for software they write. When they do, they
guarantee all the software's users permission to use, share, and
change the program as they see fit.

In xkcd comic 225, two ninjas, conspiring to stop the GPL at its
source, break through Richard Stallman's ceiling and awaken him in the
night. As you would expect, Stallman jumps alert, drawing a katana
with a shing and revealing himself as a true GPL ninja. (Of course,
the real-life Stallman is too peaceful to threaten someone with even a
butter knife, but you get the metaphor.)

"This isn't Unix — I know this."

I must confess, when I first saw in our office archives the katana
someone sent as a gift to Stallman after reading that comic, I didn't
think much of it. But over time, I saw some oddities in and around the
office that made me start to think there might be something more to
it. For example, I noticed that GPL violation reports (about people
distributing GPL software but claiming users don't have the rights
guaranteed to them) submitted to us over the past few years, some
about rather large corporations, have quietly been resolved. For
reasons unknown to me, corporations would simply fix the issues and
start following the GPL, without anything coming into the public
light.

This alone isn't anything that should seem unusual. After all, Brett
Smith has been the FSF's license compliance engineer for several years
now. Surely he's just a regular guy from Kentucky, experienced at his
job, and not some sort of secret agent. Right?

Wrong.

Brett Smith is a GPL ninja

It took me a while to figure it out, but once I examined the evidence
in front of me, I realized it was the only logical conclusion.

The first hint is the sheer volume of Brett's output. This past year
alone, he answered hundreds of complex licensing questions from the
public, wrote some widely read and timely posts for the FSF's blogs,
coded up Python scripts during breaks, and dashed across the country
to give input to policy makers. Despite the pressure he worked under,
he managed to do it all in a timely fashion and with the kind of poise
that makes you think, "I bet this kid is cool enough to beat a lie
detector test."

Even when he's not working, hearing about Brett's hobbies reinforces
the idea he's some sort of free software samurai warrior. He hacks on
personal projects like dtrx, an all-purpose archive extraction tool.
He knows some Japanese and has taken a couple of long trips to Japan.
Lately he's been getting into amateur radio -- he's already got a call
sign (KB1WJE).

But we are six short of having seven samurai

Despite Brett's skills, the battle to defend freedom and the GPL is a
job too big and too important to be left to a single ninja. And there
is a lot more that Brett wants to do. He could take even more license
violation reports head on, or publish more educational material to
teach the way of the GPL ninja to a new generation.

Plus Brett has racked up more vacation time than anyone I know, and he
would love to take another long vacation to Japan one of these days.

You don't have to take just my word for all of this. Here's what a
couple of our colleagues at other freedom-friendly organizations have
to say:

Brett has brought a very professional, constructive approach to
working with me on the license. Without his dedication and patience
the new GPL compatibility approach would not have succeeded.

-- Luis Villa, on the Mozilla Public License 2.0

This year we managed to announce the acceptability of CC0 for usage
with software and its compatibility with the GPL. Licensing issues
are complex, and this probably couldn't have happened if we hadn't
been able to take advantage of the excellent knowledge and skills of
Brett Smith.